Join us on January 10th from 6-8pm to kick off the DIFM Extension Conference! 

Please RSVP to jbruner9@illinois.edu by December 16

January 9-10, 2025 the DIFM NC1210 Meeting will be held in Clearwater, FL

You can register for this conference here:  NC1210 Registration  

On January 11-12, DIFM will be hosting an Extension Conference at the same hotel. 

You can register for that conference here:  Extension Registration 

For more information or questions about either event, please email jbruner9@illinois.edu

January 9-10, 2025 the DIFM NC1210 Meeting will be held in Clearwater, FL

You can register for this conference here:  NC1210 Registration  

On January 11-12, DIFM will be hosting an Extension Conference at the same hotel. 

You can register for that conference here:  Extension Registration 

Renzo Negrini, a graduate student at the Precision Agriculture Center, University of Minnesota, Saint Paul Campus, has been honored by the International Society of Precision Agriculture as one of the top ten outstanding graduate students/researchers in precision agriculture worldwide. This prestigious award, typically reserved for PhD students and researchers, underscores Renzo’s exceptional impact during his Master's program. His groundbreaking on-farm precision agriculture research in nutrient management is tackling critical societal issues, enabling farmers to achieve agronomic, economic, and environmental benefits.

His dedication to precision agriculture drives a sustainable revolution in farming practices. By empowering farmers with data-driven insights, optimizing resource use, and promoting environmentally friendly practices, Renzo is advancing scientific knowledge and contributing to a more sustainable and profitable agricultural future. His work is a testament to the transformative power of on-farm research, benefiting the global farming community and the environment.

Renzo Negrini is an M.S. student/researcher advised by Dr. Yuxin Miao; his research focuses on On-farm precision nutrient management (nitrogen and sulfur) in corn and soybean crops, aiming to improve farmers' agronomic, economic, and sustainable benefits while doing scientific research and sharing the created value with the world. In addition, he is testing a biostimulant (regenerative agriculture) in on-farm corn trials and contributing to another on-farm variable-rate seeding project. 

"Receiving the highest professional award possible at this moment and being applauded by my idols and renowned professionals from around the world (over 400 people from more than 40 countries) was an unforgettable experience that shows we are on the right path. I hope everyone can experience this one day... . I hope that this will incentivize and motivate the young generation (and their supervisors) to invest more time and effort to learn more and do on-farm research. " - Renzo Negrini

Check out a recent podcast that FarmDoc posted about DIFM on their YoutTube Chanel

Episode 63 | Data Intensive Farm Management

Professor David Bullock conducted a presentation titled,  “Conducting On-farm Precision Experimentation with U of I Extension and the Data-Intensive Farm Management Project".  At the U of I Extension Ewing Field Day on July 24, 2025.

Have you wondered where DIFM Trials are located? We have trials taking place all over the world!

Check out this cool map that shows locations of any trial from 2016-2023. 

Take a look at this 2024 DIFM trial being successfully uploaded and implemented. It has been a successful start to 2024! Reach out to us if you have questions about our research or are looking into joining our project in 2025

.

After many rain delays, one of our farmers finally got the soybean population trial field planted on May 21^st.  The plots on this trial are 43’ wide and match the farmer's combine header width.  The only thing the farmer can do is display the as-planted data on the iPad and do a screen capture just to prove that the as-planted data matches and aligns with the prescription map.   In the past, you then used the harvest data along with the prescription file to analyze the data.

The farmer imported the screen captured .jpg image file into their SMS database and registered it so that the coordinates match the field boundary.  See the 3 images below.

Above: Screen capture of the as-planted file as displayed on our iPad (using Field Cab View)

Above: Outline of the plots (in black) displayed over the prescription map (shows proper alignment)

Above: Screen copy of the as-planted file on the left and the prescription map on the right w/legends

If any of you have questions, or would like to conduct your own DIFM Field Trials - please contact us. 

We were curious to see if cover crop plots would be visible from the sky, so we went and took a look for ourselves. In the image below, you can see the difference in the cover crop field compared to the surrounding fields. 

You can really see the cover crops with NDVI (image below)

We were then curious to see how it aligned with the original design.  See below. It will be very interesting to compare the as-seeded data with this result. Maybe some plots were seeded but did not grow.

This remote sensing data might help predict the N credit from the cover crop.

On February 15, 2024, the UMN Precision Agriculture Center organized the 2024 On-farm Precision Agriculture Research Network Meeting to share and discuss the results of 2023 on-farm precision agriculture trials and plan for 2024 on-farm trials. The participants included collaborative growers, crop consultants, university researchers, graduate students, an USDA ARS scientist, Minnesota Department of Agriculture scientists and industry collaborators. In addition to the in-person meeting, an on-line option was also provided to those who could not join in person. 

Attached below you can find the notes, details, and pictures from the meeting. 

2024 On-farm Research Summary Meeting News

115 People participated in the Data-Intensive Farm Management Project's Conference that was held in sunny South Padre Island, Texas January 7-11th, 2024. We had 115 attendees from 12 countries who participated and listened to 50 presentations and 30 breakout/training sessions over the 4 days.  

The purpose of ICOFPE ’24 was to present and promote a revolution in agricultural sciences that moves agronomic experimentation from university- and corporate-owned fields to farmers’ own fields.  The conference brought farmers, crop consultants, and professional agricultural researchers together from all over the world who are interested in working with precision agricultural technology. Those professionals have interest in conducting meaningful agronomic field trials on farmers’ own fields, and then using the data generated to improve farm profits and enhance farm sustainability. 

The following is a breakdown of attendees:

Total registered: 115

Within that 115 registered, here is a further breakdown of the type of registration and the location of the attendees. 

Virtual: 15

Students: 19

Countries: 12 

• Brazil (2)    
• Canada (13)   
• China (1) 
• Colombia (1)     
• Germany (1)    
• Italy (1)    
• Japan (3)
• Nigeria (2)     
• Korea (1)     
• South Africa (3)     
• Uruguay (1)     
• USA (86)

Academia: 63

Industry: 52

We received some great feedback about the conference. Some attendees said:

-"There was a great balance between listening to technical and in the field experts and doing something through training and feedback."

-"The allocated time for each presentation struck an excellent balance, allowing for
comprehensive coverage without becoming overly lengthy or monotonous. The well-managed
timing not only facilitated a smooth flow but also ensured that the audience remained engaged
and attentive throughout the sessions. This approach greatly contributed to the overall
success of the event."

-"We really enjoyed the level of information that was put together for this meeting...The quality of speakers was top notch along with the information. If there will be another meeting next year we would like to be on the list."

Check out our website: https://2024.ofpe.org/ 

The DIFM team hopes to have a 2025 conference to show the continued progress that is taking place with the entire DIFM project. Be on the lookout for that information coming soon!

Bob Dunker, DIFM Field Trials Coordinator, and Carli (Miller) Jones, DIFM Project Coordinator, are set up in the Exhibit Hall at Booth 332. Stop by to learn about the project, catch up on recent updates, and learn about the upcoming International Conference for On-Farm Precision Experimentation in January 2024!

The Data-Intensive Farm Management Project, Booth 332 at the ASA, CSSA & SSSA Annual Meeting.

Jessica Bruner Joined the DIFM Team in August of 2023 as the assistant project coordinator. Jessica has years of experience in marketing and grant writing/reports. 

During a trip to Colombia by Brendan Kuhns, it became clear that yield monitors for cotton are hard to come by, especially the kind that is retrofittable on older machines. Fortunately, DIFM researcher Dr. Tony Grift did his PhD on the development of a generic method for mass flow sensing of granular materials (fertilizers in particular), and he is eager to apply his method to cotton. We will build a new optical photo-interruption arrangement that measures the spacing durations between clumps of cotton passing a sensor. Then we will apply the theory of arrival processes to determine the number of cotton clumps that pass the sensor per unit of time, which is an indirect measure of the mass flow.

What is so fascinating about this method is that it works by only measuring the spacing times in between cotton clumps. So without knowing or measuring any material parameters, we still can measure the mass flow. It gets better: the measurement device does not need calibration, since nature is literally doing the work. If you would like to read details, here are links to paper 1 and paper 2 (the second won an award from the EurAgEng organization).

We hope that this small project will also connect our statisticians with the engineers (no easy feat!). For more information, feel free to read Dr. Grift’s essay titled “Embracing variability: How to hug a cactus”, which he claims to be “loosely based on the brother of our fearless leader David Bullock.”

Figure 1 Shown is the mass flow sensing scenario; we have clumps of material (cotton balls) and we measure the spacing durations among them. Believe it or not, using Poisson driven arrival theory, these data are sufficient to determine how many clumps are passing the sensor per unit of time, irrespective or the overlapping effect. Isn’t statistics great?

Dr. Sarah Sellars is an Assistant Professor and Extension Specialist in Sustainable Farm and Food Systems in the Ness School of Management and Economics at South Dakota State University.

Her research interests include conservation practice adoption, farmer input rate decisions, farm management, precision agriculture, and agricultural ecosystems markets. Sarah holds a B.S. in Agricultural and Consumer Economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a M.S. in Agricultural Economics from Purdue University, and a Ph.D. in Agricultural and Applied Economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her interest in agricultural economics began while growing up on a family grain and livestock farm outside of Winchester, IL.  

The USDA-funded Data-Intensive Farm Management (DIFM) Project is inviting farmers, crop consultants, and anyone else interested in digital agriculture to the 2024 International Conference for On-farm Precision Experimentation (ICOFPE ’24) being held on South Padre Island, TX during the second week of January.  The purpose of ICOFPE ’24 is to present and promote a revolution in agricultural sciences that moves agronomic experimentation from university- and corporate-owned fields to farmers’ own fields.  The conference will bring together from all over the world farmers, crop consultants, and professional agricultural researchers interested in working with precision agricultural technology to conduct meaningful agronomic field trials on farmers’ own fields, and then using the data generated to improve farm profits and enhance farm sustainability. 

DIFM is university-based and involves precision agriculture researchers and teachers from over twenty U.S. educational and research institutions.  The conference will provide farmers, crop consultants and others training in how to use DIFM’s “cyber-infrastructure,” which will allow users to design and conduct full-field agronomic trials, and then gain useful insights from the data generated on their own fields.  Use of the cyber-infrastructure is free of cost, and a large conference grant from the USDA’s National Institute for Food and Agriculture has made it possible to charge low conference registration fees.

We encourage you to visit our conference website at www.ofpe.org to register for the conference and learn more about the program and presenters. 

Jan. 8-9: Symposium I: “OFPE in Practice.”  For farmers, consultants, and anyone else interested in data-based crop production management.
Jan. 10-11 Symposium II: “OFPE in Professional Research.”  Reports of formal academic research, aimed at professional researchers but open to all.

Dr. David Bullock, PI of the Data-Intensive Farm Management Project, visited Olds College for their AgSmart (https://agsmartolds.ca/) educational expo focused on data and technology across the agriculture industry.

This event took place August 1 & 2, 2023. Olds College of Agriculture & Technology welcomed more than 3,100 people for its fourth in-person AgSmart event. This two-day educational expo focused on agriculture technology and data across the sector — how to gather it and how to use it to enhance productivity and profits. 

We are set up at the National Alliance of Independent Crop Consultants (NAICC) January 25-27, in Nashville, TN. If you are a Crop Consultant or Producer interested in conducting your own on-farm field trial, come chat with us! Our DIFM Trial Design Software is set up and available to demo. Learn more about the conference here: 2023 General Overview | National Alliance of Independent Crop Consultants (naicc.org).